


Our Hands Stained Red

by Bohemienne



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Agarthan experimentation, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Crest Experiments (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Crest Removal (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Crestless Sylvain Jose Gautier, Gen, King Sylvain, M/M, Sylvbert Weekend 2020, Ultra Rarepair Big Bang (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:55:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26269828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bohemienne/pseuds/Bohemienne
Summary: Those Who Slither in the Dark need a new subject for experiments. A new puppet to seize the world and pave their way. They find it in Sylvain, another crestless son of Gautier, soft-hearted and weak enough to be their ideal pawn. And Hubert, as Sylvain's new retainer and minder, must help them.If only he didn't fall in love with the boy he must hurt.(A Crestless Sylvain AU with @Hononoart for the Ultra Rarepair Big Bang and Sylvbert Weekend 2020!)
Relationships: Sylvain Jose Gautier/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 13
Kudos: 63
Collections: 2020 Ultra Rarepair Big Bang, Sylvbert Weekend 2020





	Our Hands Stained Red

**Author's Note:**

> Illustration by [@Hononoart](http://twitter.com/hononoart)!
> 
> For the Ultra Rarepair Big Bang, as well as Sylvbert Weekend Day 1: Crests.
> 
> Crestless Sylvain created by @vwyn19.
> 
> My dear friend V and her Sylvain headcanons have informed so much of how I interpret him as a character (and is the reason I fell deep into Sylvbert hell!). I've tried to make this Sylvain my own, but I have no doubt her awesome influence has seeped in.

**Subject age: 11**

He stares at the red-haired boy in front of him with a strange bubbly feeling in his chest. He looks to be Hubert’s age, but where Hubert looks in the mirror and sees quiet, solemn, a shadow trying to retreat behind its source, this boy looks like a flame about to catch. He’s grinning, gap-toothed, and almost tripping over himself and the hunting hounds swirling around him as he rushes to greet Hubert, skinned knees and scabbed chin testament to his exuberance. Hubert clutches his book to his chest, and as he looks at bright copper eyes and a smile like a warm embrace, he hopes, desperately, this wasn’t the boy the Agarthans were discussing for their experiments.

“I’m Sylvain,” he announces, jabbing his hand out, presumably for a shake. “Are you supposed to be my new friend?”

“Hubert von Vestra, at your service.” Hubert reaches for his hand because it’s the polite thing to do. But rather than shake, Sylvain just takes hold and wrenches him down the path, dogs leaping and snuffling at them all the way. His hand is so warm, and sticky from playing outdoors, and normally Hubert would recoil—he’s not used to being touched—but something makes him hold on all the same.

The dogs disperse with a shoo from Sylvain, nails clicking on rough stone as they wind down the garden path. If it can even be called a garden proper. Gautier is so different from Adrestia already, and not just the chill threading through the air when everything should be well in bloom. It’s a land carved out of rough stone, jagged and barren, and the margrave’s keep is no different.

Sylvain leads him to a tree deeper in the gardens, and takes a running jump up into its branches. “Bet you can’t do that.”

Hubert knows he should pretend to be weak. He isn’t supposed to talk about all the training he does. But he wants to prove himself to this boy a little too much.

One quick jump, feet dancing up the trunk in silence—and he’s in the canopy right beside Sylvain.

Sylvain’s head tilts to one side, and Hubert can’t help but feel he’s passed some test. He wishes now he hadn’t. “Do you climb trees a lot where you’re from?”

And garden walls, and alleyways, and more besides—almost twelve years old, and he’s been training for seven of them. Before he can answer, though, Sylvain quiets him with a nervous hand clutching his shoulder.

Hubert looks up—and spots the boy trudging down the path, almost a man, arguing with what looks like a keep guardsman. His hair is the same blood red as Sylvain’s, but where everything about Sylvain seems finely carved from marble, this man is a slab of uncut granite, dense and foreboding. His eyes sweep like trained arrows around him as he walks. Hand still closed on Hubert’s shoulder, Sylvain retreats deeper into the leaves.

“Who is that?” Hubert asks, once he’s passed them, safely out of earshot.

Sylvain is quiet a moment, and Hubert glances back to find him biting his lower lip. “My older brother. Miklan.”

Hubert frowns. He doesn’t remember hearing anything about him. Strange, that the Agarthans wouldn’t choose the eldest…

“He doesn’t have a crest,” Sylvain says. “He and Papa yell about it sometimes.” The hush in his voice says it’s more than that.

“I don’t have one either,” Hubert says, though he wonders why he felt compelled to volunteer. “It isn’t such a bad thing.”

“Yeah,” Sylvain says. “I have one, though. I mean—that’s what they say. It just hasn’t shown itself yet.”

Hubert’s mouth pops open, his stomach going tight. So he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know at all why they’ve come . . . “Do you want one?” he asks tenuously.

Sylvain just shrugs and starts to climb back down, and Hubert can’t see his face when he answers. “Doesn’t everyone?”

* * *

_‘Latent Crest Manifestation’ Protocol_

_Subject (11y.o.) begins Stage 1: preliminary reconstruction. Venal irrigation established along primary routes for continued reapplication in Stage 2._

_Crest (Gautier, Class B) to be harvested from Subject’s father. Reconstruction using parental sources show highest rate of success. Stage 2, preliminary exposure, commencing soon._

* * *

**Subject age: 13**

He spends the first year in Gautier befriending Sylvain and the next two wishing he’d never met him.

Hubert has his orders: tend to the little lord. Wait on him hand and foot. Be his companion, his confidant, his comfort. They play chess against each other; sit side by side through tutoring lessons, and read the same books, both of them prone to staying up far too late into the night to finish so they can talk eagerly about it the next day. Hubert is right at his side when he’s wanted, and evaporates like candle smoke when he’s not.

But he has other orders, too, that he can never share: the tonics he pours into Sylvain’s food to drop him into a deep sleep before the men with the beaked masks carry him into Gautier Keep’s depths. And though he was never ordered to—perhaps because he was never ordered to—he is also always there when they bring him back, waiting with a cool rag to lay across Sylvain’s forehead and his hand outstretched, fingers already long and whittled, like bone-handled knives, for Sylvain to squeeze and clutch at as he sobs through his fever.

Those are the worst times, after a round of reconstruction. When the fever breaks and Sylvain’s eyes become glassy with tears instead of sedatives; when the red in his cheeks is something he tries to hide, because even then, Margrave Gautier is telling him all the things men do and don’t do, and those things and Sylvain’s instincts never quite seem to align.

(Hubert likes his liege best when he doesn’t listen to the margrave, but no one ever asks him, and he’ll never tell.)

Hubert doesn’t let himself sleep for those days after each round, because Sylvain wanders a twilight plane between dreams and recollection. As he comes back to himself, he asks endless questions, ones Hubert can only answer with lies. Hubert tells himself that someday he’ll make up for it with truths.

Given all the things Hubert has been trained for, is still training to do—stealing letters, secrets, life—it shouldn’t weigh on his conscience so much. But he doesn’t understand why they had to choose this boy, why he’s the one who should suffer, and not his older brother, so angry, so unpredictable, so proud. So very much more like the man the margrave admonishes Sylvain to be.

* * *

_Reconstruction completed: 12 Blue Sea Moon, 1174_

_Crest has manifested reliably in all tests without additional stimulation or priming. Vitals have returned to acceptable parameters for post-reconstruction stability._

_Gautier Crest reconstruction into crestless subject is a success._

* * *

**Subject age: 15**

There’s probably a scientific reason behind why turning fifteen leaves Hubert a gangly, pimpled mess with long limbs all tangled up, but Sylvain becomes a bright-faced treasure with muscles that ripple like a stallion’s.

Hubert doesn’t care. He only knows the results it produces.

The marriage offers are hardly a surprise—not once his crest has been verified by the Church, marked down and recorded—a worthy steed to breed. Hubert isn’t prepared, though, for the women throwing themselves at his liege like perfumed handkerchiefs. They corner him at banquets, lean into him while they dance, drag him to the gardens, away—they think—from prying eyes.

Hubert, of course, sees everything.

He sees Sylvain flirting back.

He sees Sylvain convincing girls to kiss him and make it look like their idea.

He sees them push him into the stables hay, too many ruffled skirts lifting up.

Then he doesn’t see much of anything through tears blurring his sight as he flees back to his room in the keep, far less silently than he’s capable of.

There’s shouting behind him, someone calling his name, but it sounds strange to hear it out loud. He’s never been something to be spoken aloud, noticed, loved. Least of all by this boy he’s supposed to befriend and confide in—not lie to, harm, fall in love with—

“The hells is wrong with you?” Sylvain demands, slamming the door shut behind him. “Why were you spying on me?”

“I wasn’t spying on _you_. I was simply—” Hubert chokes back all the raw emotion clogging his throat, like underchewed hunks of meat. “Doing my duty. Making sure you don’t make a colossal embarrassment of yourself as the Gautier heir.” His eyes flash with something poisonous. “Trust me, it’s a full-time occupation.”

Sylvain’s eyes gleam with a wounded fury, and Hubert recognizes the look too well. It’s a look he’s only ever seen him give Miklan. “I don’t need a babysitter, and I certainly didn’t ask for one like you. A greasy-haired raincloud who wouldn’t know fun if it bit him on the ass.”

“What are you talking about, you ungrateful—”

“If I wanna mess around with these girls? These preening, conniving brats who think I’m gonna give them a crest baby? Just let me. It’s all anyone ever wants from me anyway.”

 _I don’t,_ Hubert thinks, with an ache in his heart like it’s being ripped away. _If anything, I liked you better before._

“I wish I didn’t even have this stupid crest,” Sylvain mutters. Before Hubert can respond, he shoves past him, wrenching the door open again. “Stay out of my way.”

And Hubert wishes he didn’t either—but then realizes it for a lie. For without his accursed crest, without their cruel experiments, he never would have met Sylvain. And even now, gloved fingers gripping at his own greasy hair, his face permanently carved into a scowl like his father’s, he thinks not having Sylvain—it’s a pain he couldn’t take.

Does that make him worse than these girls? Than the nobles and their relentless quest to bolster their bloodlines? Maybe, knowing all the pain his presence has caused Sylvain, it’s the most selfish thought of all.

* * *

**Subject age: 16**

If Sylvain thought he was a raincloud before, then now, Hubert is nothing but a shadow, intangible and easily dispelled with light. All it takes is the slightest glance from Sylvain, and Hubert is gone.

He doesn’t want to see the girls Sylvain ushers into his bedroom, in a fluttering cloud of giggling and perfume and syrupy words. He can’t bear the sight of the boys Sylvain kisses in darkened corridors with their bright skin and clean hair and easy smiles. He only tends to Sylvain at all when he’s summoned by him, and those times are few and far between. The soft-hearted boy who hid in a tree with him, who shared all his secrets, must have been drained away. What they implanted in his veins is someone else.

He still stares at Sylvain enough, though, to notice when his hair begins to fade.

“Stop fussing with it already,” Sylvain chides him one evening, when Hubert is trying to comb that messy bundle of red just so. The roots are so much paler, and fine threads of silver have emerged. Soon enough, someone else is bound to notice. They’re bound to question what’s happened to him.

When Hubert doesn’t stop, Sylvain grows even more impatient. “If you really wanna run your fingers through my hair, you should know I charge most people for the privilege.”

Hubert’s veins harden to stone. “The Whore of Gautier,” he mutters, echoing the name he’s heard Miklan and others say behind Sylvain’s back. “Good to know you live up to your reputation, my lord.”

Sylvain jerks away from him and the vanity where he’d been sitting. “What’s the matter, Vestra? Jealous?”

It burns like poison on the tip of his tongue: the truth. He’s dying to spit it in Sylvain’s face and watch him burn. _The only thing anyone wants from you is a lie. You’re falling apart from the inside out, your blood boiling with a power you can’t handle. And I helped._

Later, if he had faith in the goddess, he might pretend it was divine intervention that stayed his tongue. But he knows it was his own cowardice.

Later, the messenger arrives, breathless and sweat-soaked, with an urgent message from Fhirdiad: King Lambert is dead.

Each of Sylvain’s closest friends lost someone in the attack. And over the next few weeks, Sylvain loses those friends as they retreat into the cold darkness of their grief. And when his hair turns more white than not, Hubert’s the only one around to see.

When Glenn Fraldarius is no longer around to run Miklan off, and Hubert is too wounded to care, that’s when Miklan strikes like the viper he is. Hubert is never told the specifics, but the angry red lines pressed into Sylvain’s throat give him some idea. He himself is quite skilled, after all, at garotte.

The margrave has had enough at last of Miklan endangering his investment—their project. Their experiment. Their prize-winning stud. He’s thrown from the manor, and storms off with his band of thugs and sellswords to take his hatred out on the countryside of Gautier instead.

Hubert tends to Sylvain’s wounds, because the spoiled lord won’t let anyone else touch him. It lifts Hubert’s heart more than it should.

“I’m sorry,” Hubert murmurs, cleaning the cuts with alcohol as Sylvain hisses and seethes. “I should have been there to stop him.”

“It was hardly the first time.”

* * *

_“The attack left the Blaiddyd boy too unstable. Too distraught. He is not strong enough to be the leader we need.” Cornelia jabs an accusing finger at Thales. “We cannot control a boy like that.”_

_Thales glances toward Hubert. “Then we need a king who we can.”_

Please, no, _Hubert thinks, cursing his parents for the millionth time for trapping him in the service of these monsters._ Please leave Sylvain be. Haven’t you done enough?

_“What about the Gautier boy?” Thales asks._

_“Hmm… The Blaiddyd heir driven mad with his grief. The future margrave offered instead as next in line. Fraldarius might object, but they’re dealing with a grief their own. It just might work.”_

Please don’t make him do this.

_“Vestra. Make it so.”_

* * *

**Subject age: 18**

After Sylvain comes clean to him about all the torment Miklan wrought, it’s too painful for Hubert to keep away. He’s failed him. He’s failed Sylvain, and if he truly feels for him the way he thinks he does, then he won’t care how Sylvain occupies himself, or with whom; he won’t care what poison quiets the taint inside his blood. There are better things for him to wish he could change.

What he doesn’t want to change is the way Sylvain reaches for his hand at the end of the day, strong fingers cradling Hubert’s thin wrist so softly. He would never give up the soft mewl of _Stay_ that leaves Sylvain’s lips when his coppery eyes gleam with the reflection of the coming night. _I don’t want to be alone._

Hubert doesn’t ask what slithers into his mind at night, because he can already guess. He remembers Sylvain’s screams and sobs even when Sylvain doesn’t, as he was bled dry and remade again and again. Maybe sometimes the face he sees is his brother’s instead of the mages in masks, leaving wounds that are harder to spot.

It doesn’t mean anything that he’s the one Sylvain asks for comfort; he’s just who happens to be there. Is it worth the searing shame that brands him when Sylvain curls into him during sleep? When he clings to Hubert with hooked fingers, like he’s the only good thing in his life? It has to be.

Hubert runs his fingers through the rich red hair he’s started to dye for Sylvain to cover up the creeping threads of white. Like if he can just help him keep his color, he can make up for all the awfulness he’s allowed.

But when he pulls his hand away, it’s smeared with red.

[img]

* * *

**Subject age: 20**

The margrave and the mages agree, just after Hubert’s twentieth birthday: it’s time to ready them both for the war to come.

They arrive at Garreg Mach Officer’s Academy on a too-bright day in Great Tree Moon, and before the margrave’s caravan even departs, Sylvain is already pushing up his sleeves and unbuttoning his collar just so. “Finally,” he says with a grin to Hubert, “we can be ourselves without our folks breathing down our necks.”

It’s only because Hubert’s the one who will be monitoring him in their stead, but Hubert doesn’t correct him.

Hubert is used to the dry, choking taste of secrets like the ones he keeps from Sylvain every day. But studying the art of war from the knights and monks he’s meant to one day fight is its own kind of secret, delicious and slippery-cool sliding down his throat. As much as he hates to agree with the Agarthans on anything, after what they’ve done to Sylvain, he does despise the Church of Seiros. For making crests so damned valuable in the first place. For making people scrabble over each other because of them, like rats picking over a corpse.

Most of all, he hates it for the way it makes Sylvain hate himself.

“I can’t take it anymore,” he sobs one night, dragging Hubert from their dorm rooms after he’s staggered back drunk and exhausted from a date with a villager girl. “I can’t stand the way they look at me, fawn over me. It makes me want to claw off my own skin.”

Hubert leads them through the broken stonemasonry that leads into an unused part of the catacombs, cool and dry and the only place he feels safe in the whole monastery, free from prying eyes. Sylvain paces back and forth in a shaft of moonlight, nails digging at his arms, smelling of sex and wine and salty tears. Only when he’s exhausted himself, the white toes of his boots dingy with dust, does he collapse onto the floor at Hubert’s side.

“We can destroy it,” Hubert whispers. It’s what he wants, but he hates that it matches what the Agarthans want, too.

Sylvain looks at him through damp, dark lashes that glisten. “What? The Church? My crest?”

“The Church. The people who enforce this order. Everyone who treats crestbearers like currency, makes them into their pawns.”

Sylvain sucks down fresh air. “Why do you care? You don’t even have one.”

 _Because it hurts you,_ he wants to scream. Instead he turns to face Sylvain, and licks his thumb so he can scrub away the dried trail of salt down Sylvain’s cheek. “It hurts those with and without, although in different ways.”

“They want me to rule,” he mutters. Somehow, the silvery moonlight transmutes his dull gray-brown eyes into warm, molten amber as he gazes at Hubert. “But how can I really rule when they want to trap me in their schemes? I’ll just be a puppet for them. They just want the same thing as everyone else wants from me. An heir with a crest of their own.”

The salt rubs off, but Hubert can’t bring himself to take his hand from that warm, freckled cheek. “You deserve to rule. You deserve to . . . decide for yourself.”

“Stop it. Stop saying nice things about me.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “You’re so much better to me than I deserve.”

“You deserve everything.”

Sylvain’s lips meet his, and it’s such a relief that even Hubert can ignore the sour tang on Sylvain’s mouth from someone else. Sylvain is so easy to kiss, guiding him gently, showing the way, working his lips just right against Hubert’s and sighing with desperate breaths. He’s easy to kiss, Hubert thinks, because he’s practiced this way—

But then it changes, and Sylvain is clinging to him, needy, his mouth reckless and surrendering to Hubert’s advance. Like he’s so tired of being in charge, and just needs to yield, yield.

With every nip at Sylvain’s lips and ears and throat, every low growl and grip at dyed red hair, every unleashing of years of desire that’s fermented and distilled—he gives himself to Hubert, and Hubert never wants to let this go.

When he stops, gasping for air, he keeps his hands around Sylvain’s face, and Sylvain gazes up at him.

“They want me to rule,” he says again.

Hubert nods. “They want you to rule . . . and declare war on the Church.”

Sylvain’s gaze falls to the side. “And what do you want?”

He can tell him the truth without saying all of it. “I want you to be free of them.”

“But what about for yourself?”

But Hubert can’t think like that. “I . . . I want to help.”

Sylvain leans up to kiss him once more, mouth rounding gently on Hubert’s raw, swollen lower lip. “We have to destroy this system. I don’t care how.”

Hubert wraps his arms around him, cradling Sylvain’s head to his chest, and suddenly Sylvain is that frightened little boy again, refusing to let him go. “We will,” Hubert tells him. “We will.”

* * *

**Subject age: 21**

Hubert finally understands the high Sylvain must get from all of his trysts: it’s like coming up for air after holding his breath beneath the surface for so long. And maybe Sylvain still spends some evenings flirting and wooing; it’s Hubert’s bed he returns to, every single night. Arms open, mouth soft, nestling into him like he’s found a home. He’s the only true home Hubert’s ever known.

But every night they spend together, every morning they wake up with their limbs tangled together and sunlight kissing Sylvain’s freckles with gold, is just another day that brings them closer to their fate. The one the margrave is steering Sylvain toward, and the strings the Agarthans are tugging behind the curtains that Sylvain can’t even see.

“He’s ready for the lance,” Thales purrs. “He must claim it to show his worthiness to become king.”

Hubert wants to lie and say it’s not time—not just yet. But he’s stalled as long as he can.

“Then we’ll make sure he claims it in a suitably royal fashion,” the margrave says.

When word reaches the academy that Miklan’s returned to Gautier and stolen the Lance of Ruin for himself, Hubert’s heart sinks to his feet. This is the margrave’s trap, and Sylvain’s tormentor—the bait.

“Are you sure you’re all right with this?” Hubert asks, as they saddle their horses to ride out with their class. _You don’t have to do this. Please don’t think you have anything to prove to me._

But Sylvain’s face turns to stone. “I have to be.”

After they see what the crest stones can do to the crestless, after Sylvain’s hands run black with the beast’s blood, after the archbishop grudgingly surrenders the relic to Sylvain—

Hubert has new nightmares to fend off—this time, his own.

Each night he closes his eyes, and sees Sylvain clutching the lance in hands turned to claws, his screams turning to roars as oily flesh rips free from inside of him. The crest the Agarthans forced into him isn’t enough. His body rejects it like the toxin it is, and the Lance of Ruin can sense it, refusing to obey him. Even the Agarthans can’t say for certain how long their reconstruction will last, or how quickly it will leach the life from his marrow. It’s entirely possible, he thinks, that his nightmare will come true.

He wakes up, Sylvain sleeping cozily against him, and stares at the lance in the corner of the room. Watching them. Humming with a chord that his ears can never resolve and make his teeth throb like he’s chewing ice. It moves when Sylvain moves, bony fingers grasping toward him. As if it’s only a matter of time before it can claim him for its victim, too.

He can’t let Sylvain wander into its trap blindly. He can’t hold these secrets any longer, tainting every second they’re together. Sylvain has been poisoned enough without Hubert adding to it more.

Hubert throws a heavy wool blanket over the Lance of Ruin and waits for Sylvain to return to their dorm room.

“Do you remember when I first came to Gautier?” Hubert murmurs, arms wrapped around his waist in bed, face buried in dyed hair. He doesn’t know how else to start.

Sylvain laughs to himself. “You were so adorable. This serious little boy who only smiled when we played chess . . .”

Hubert doesn’t let himself smile back. “And soon after, you started to get sick.”

Sylvain is quiet for a long while. “I wasn’t able to have my crest verified by the Church until after I stopped getting sick. It took years.”

“No. It was because you didn’t have one.”

“What are you talking about,” Sylvain breathes, and Hubert tries to explain. Tries to justify himself, that at least in him, Sylvain had some kind of ally—

“—I thought they were fever dreams. Hallucinations. The masks, the tubes of blood . . .”

“—Better that than the cruelty they were actually inflicting on you—”

“That _you_ inflicted, Hubert. You did this to me, too.” He rips away from Hubert’s arms. “I trusted you when I could trust no one else. You’re saying this—these scars all over me, this—stupid hair—” He grabs at a fistful of it, and wrenches his hand away, pulling off smears of red dye. “You’re saying I was free of all of this, that I could’ve lived happily crest-free, and because of _you_ —”

“Because of your _father_. Because of those people he and my parents work with—”

“But you enabled it all. Got my trust, drugged me, let me think I was losing it, or on the verge of death—”

“I was the one trying to keep the real you alive!”

They’re both standing now, Hubert’s face heated, but Sylvain’s is deathly cold. His eyes like tarnished coins. In the corner, beneath the blanket, the lance’s static swells.

“Get out of my sight,” Sylvain says, his tone unsettlingly flat. “You’re my servant. And nothing more.”

So it is only as his servant that he stands at Sylvain’s side when they crown him king of Faerghus. Sylvain’s gaze never meets his as he declares war on the Church. Hubert tries to ignore the wave of nausea he feels every time he’s in Sylvain’s presence, and tries to tell himself it’s only the lance. But it’s the emptiness inside him, dizzying and hungering still.

* * *

_“He is breaking down. It’s your sloppy work with reconstruction to blame.”_

_“Silence, Thales. It’s that cursed lance, is all. It gnaws at whoever wields it.”_

_“He is cold. Erratic. Reckless in battle. When we retook Enbarr, he charged into the palace alone as if to face them all himself—”_

_Hubert steps forward. “And I kept him safe then, did I not? I followed, and ensured no harm befell him.”_

_Cornelia’s lip curls back with a sneer. “Perhaps you can withstand palace guards. But you won’t be able to protect him like that against the Immaculate One.” She whirls on Thales. “What does it matter now? What do you suggest?”_

_“You know what I recommend.”_

_She glares at him. “We cannot burn the crest out of him, not this late. He couldn’t survive it.”_

_“We don’t need him to survive anymore. With Rufus dead, Ionius dead and deposed, Faerghus and Adrestia reunited, the Church on the run . . . Is this not what we sought?”_

Burn the crest out of him? _Hubert mouths to himself. Could such a thing even be done?_

_“We must throw him at Rhea first. We’ll need every relic we can to slay her for good.”_

_Thales drums long nails against the table. “Yes . . . but then after . . . We claim it was the stress of the battle that overtaxed him so.” He turns to Hubert. “You can steady him for one last battle, can you not?”_

_He swallows, tasting bile. “Of course.”_

* * *

**Subject age: 23**

He scours his mother’s research and every Agarthan text he can. Burning out crests. If they are a power source, then it stands to reason that source can be depleted. But for most crestbearers, the crest is an intrinsic part of them. You could no more remove it than remove their liver.

Sylvain is not such a crestbearer. Hubert has to believe this.

The night before they march to retake Garreg Mach, Hubert hovers at Sylvain’s shoulder after bringing him his dinner. Sylvain has given up on dyeing his hair—to spend less time around Hubert, Hubert assumes—and the white is stark against the dark gold of his crown. It makes him look worn out, drained away.

“You can go,” he says, not looking Hubert’s way. “I don’t have any more need of you tonight.”

“Your Majesty . . .” Hubert bows his head and folds his hands behind his back. “I never . . . apologized to you. You have every reason to hate me, and I accept that. What I did to you—what I let be done to you—is unforgivable.”

Sylvain’s nose goes red, and he sniffs, turning away. “I don’t—care, it doesn’t matter . . .”

“Don’t say that. Of course it matters.” His breath hitches. “You’ve always mattered, to me.”

Sylvain is quiet for a moment, then shakes his head, picking up his glass of wine. “Well, you’ve apologized now, so if you’re done—”

“I think I know how we can stop them,” Hubert whispers.

Sylvain’s hand trembles, spilling a drop of red wine on his pale tunic. He dabs it with his napkin, still not meeting Hubert’s gaze. “I don’t—know what you’re talking about.”

“It takes a tremendous amount of power to destroy the Agarthans. More than most of us from Fódlan are even capable of. But you can do it.”

Finally, Sylvain lifts his chin.

The light Hubert loves is gone from his eyes, and his always-confident mouth is now soft, trembling. But he steadies himself all the same.

“You’re sure you want that?”

“As badly as you do,” Hubert breathes. “Possibly more.”

Sylvain stares at Hubert until his eyes water, and he blinks the dampness away. “Fine. I’ll do it,” he says. “But I’m doing it for me, not you.”

 _That’s all right,_ Hubert thinks. _So am I._

* * *

The Immaculate One falls with the bones of her mother piercing her hide and her blood running down the monastery steps. The Agarthans who have slithered in shadows for so long no longer need fear the wrath of the goddess. Soon, they will have no need of the mortals of Fódlan, especially not their king, weakened and broken by the weight of a false crest. They don’t have much time at all.

 _I will ensure the drug is in His Majesty’s food as requested,_ Hubert tells his masters. _You should have no trouble extracting the crest._

And as he’s done dozens of times before, he brings His Majesty’s food to him laced with a potion.

This time, though, it is not the sleeping draught he used on him when they were younger. It’s something stolen, in fact, from Thales’s own stash: the potion used to aid the blood reconstruction, allowing deeper access to the power of one’s crest.

Hubert’s gaze meets Sylvain’s, and he nods.

When Sylvain falls unconscious, Hubert drags him away, as dutifully as he always has. He lures Cornelia and Thales around to perform what they must. He places the Lance of Ruin in Sylvain’s hands loosely, to help funnel the Crest of Gautier’s power so they can burn it right out—

And suddenly Sylvain lurches up, the straps Hubert was supposed to secure unfastened, and plunges the lance into Cornelia’s heart.

As she gurgles and spews black, oily blood, the full might of Gautier pours into her, overwhelming centuries of Agarthan technology and refinement that kept her alive to this point. Even she can’t repel that level of force.

“Imbeciles,” Thales growls, and reaches for the yawning void of Zahras to cast them into.

But his grasp on dark energy has been loosened by the tonic Hubert slipped in his food at their celebratory feast.

Hubert has no difficulty wrenching his arms behind his back and putting the dagger to his throat. It won’t be enough to kill him. But the surge of crest power swelling still in Sylvain, a shell cracking, is all it will take.

Sylvain wrenches the lance from Cordelia’s gut, and pierces Thales instead as searing white light burns through the Agarthan darkness.

When Thales’s screams fade, Sylvain’s take over, the crest inside him burning itself out. Will it break like a fever from an invading disease? Or like a vase shattering apart?

Sylvain howls—flings the Lance of Ruin away from him. Black tendrils are already sprouting from its shaft, but haven’t yet burrowed into his skin—

“It’s gone,” Sylvain wheezes. “The crest. It’s gone.”

Hubert rushes toward him, and without thinking, throws his arms around Sylvain, clinging to him even as his hands are slippery with black blood.

But Sylvain clings right back before exhaustion claims him, and Hubert lets him sleep, dreamless, alone, free, crestless, whole.

* * *

**Subject age: 43**

Hubert always wakes up before his husband, the weak gray light of Gautier mornings enough to tickle his honed senses. Sylvain is not similarly cursed; he sleeps like a man who’s done running, and sprawls wide, clutching Hubert in meaty arms as if Hubert were just a stick doll. Hubert turns his head to watch Sylvain as his sleeps. The dawn light glints on the patchy, scruffy beard on Sylvain’s cheeks, and for a moment, the hairs look washed out, until the light shifts and reveals them for bright red.

It took years after he’d purged the forged crest from his body for his hair to grow out red. Neither of them had expected it, but to Hubert even more than Sylvain, it was an immense relief. If his hair could return, then maybe the rest of him is healing, too—his blood slowly purifying. Even more refreshing, though, is the new softness around him, once well-tuned muscles relaxing into a cushion that Hubert craves.

Sylvain no longer spends every moment chasing away his own thoughts, making himself a chiseled god for others to worship and distract. He inhabits himself, fully, and invites Hubert to inhabit him too.

Head tucked under chin. Arms cradling assassin’s lithe bones. Red hair furring sun-leathered, freckled skin from spending each day on horseback, riding from one end of the continent to the other, relinquishing chunks of his empire to those he knew he could trust to keep Fódlan safe from Agarthans and crests alike.

Hubert at his back every mile of the way: his protector, his enforcer, his home.

Sylvain’s lips smack together in his sleep, and he tugs Hubert closer, nuzzling into the crook of his neck. He mumbles something nonsensical before dozing back off, and Hubert melts from the tenderness of it. It was five years before Sylvain clearly said that he forgave him, and another year beyond that before he confessed he was still in love. But then they zipped back together, stronger than ever before.

Hubert lied to protect himself, once. To keep himself in the good graces of the boy they’d decided to make into their puppet king. He lied to spare Sylvain the pain of the truth.

But they’ve stripped it all away, their crowns, their obligations, their crests and nightmares and masters. All they need is here, in each other’s arms, in the silence of this bed.

**Author's Note:**

> [@Bohemienne6](http://twitter.com/Bohemienne6)   
>  [@Hononoart](http://twitter.com/Hononoart)


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